


Relive

by hermitized



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Beating, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4971478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitized/pseuds/hermitized
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah relives his death. Gansey bears witness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relive

The fork Noah had been idly chewing on hit the ground, and the clatter stopped Gansey mid-sentence. He looked up out of his thoughts and saw that Noah was standing. He looked different, more different that usual, in a way Gansey couldn’t quite put his finger on, and he was staring at him. No, not at him, through him, but it felt like it was at him.

“Whelk,” he started to say, question just barely beginning to form, “What are you--”

And then his head snapped back with such force Gansey jumped, and he crumpled to ground. Gansey said, “Noah,” loud and forceful, but he knew even as he said it that Noah couldn’t hear him. Noah was somewhere else.

In the same instant that the next invisible hit crushed half of his friend’s face, Gansey understood what was happening. For some reason, likely the same reason that he’d been disappearing, Noah was reliving his death.

Noah was trying to scream, to sob, but he couldn’t, not really. The sound of it, more than anything else, made Gansey sick to his stomach. He felt suddenly lightheaded, digging his fingers into the arms of his chair. Despite that, he didn’t let himself look away, or close his eyes.

Though he’d never be able to explain it to anyone else after, he felt like he owed it to Noah, to witness what had happened to him. To bear the burden of the moment that had ended his life, and made space for Gansey’s.

For the first time that night, he’s grateful that Ronan’s out doing something probably stupid and dangerous. Ronan didn’t need to see this, to know with certainty what the last breaths of someone who’d been beaten to death sounded like.

Watching Noah, the buzzing of the hornets was in his ears, in his brain, as loud as the day he’d died. As he listened to his breaths get wetter and slower, he remembered what it was like to stop breathing. He remembered the fear that had become his entire world.

Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to talk to Noah, to be able to hold his hand, to make it clear to him that he wasn’t alone. In point of fact, Noah hadn’t been alone when he’d died really, but Gansey’d eat his shoes if Whelk had done anything to comfort him in his last moments. He wasn’t sure he hated anyone in this world as much as he hated Barrington Whelk.

Did this mean Noah was going to disappear for good? Would this be the last Gansey ever saw of him? The thought made him even hotter, and dizzier. He didn’t want his last memory of Noah to be this horrible.

And then, all of sudden, there was silence. Noah--Noah’s body--lay there for a long moment and then it--he--disappeared. 

Gansey sat like a statue, unable to move, barely able to think. Under the surface, his skin burned. He wished he could tell someone, but it’s very late, and he didn’t want to tell Ronan, or Adam, not until he’d had time to think about how to say. He wished that Blue had a cell phone, so he could text her. She at least might be able to offer some sort of answer, or know someone who could. He waited.

And waited.

He was about to give up, to go lay in bed and pretend like he could possibly sleep, when the room got very cold. One moment, the couch was empty, and then Noah was sitting there, head cocked, looking at him. “Sorry, I think I missed the last thing you said. Could you repeat it?”

Gansey had no idea what the last thing he’d said was, and he didn’t care.Relief flooded his chest, and he did his best to force his face into something that resembled a normal, neutral expression. Noah saw right through it though. “I disappeared again,” he said, both statement and question, apologetic

There was no way he could tell him. If Noah didn’t remember, or hadn’t experienced it consciously, then that was a blessing. It was another prick of relief. 

“Yes,” Gansey said. Then, he shrugged. “I lost my train of thought, do you remember?”

Noah rattled off something about Welsh mythology, and Gansey let it spark something in his brain, and picked up where he’d probably left off. Noah picked up the fork, pressing his fingers experimentally on the tines, like he was testing how real he was this time.

For seven years, he’d thought that no sound could stick with him the way the hornets could. Lying in bed early that morning, when Noah had gone wherever Noah went (this time, thank god, quietly) he could still hear the sound of Noah’s breath catching and bubbling in his chest. He knew it wouldn’t leave his mind for a very long time.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.

“I wish you were alive,” Gansey said, to the empty room. “I’m sorry.” Then, “You deserved to have a real friend.”

The only response is the wind rattling the window. He hoped that Noah could hear him anyway.


End file.
